1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to electronic marketplace that facilitates electronic trade, more particularly in cross-market trading.
2. Description of Prior Art
Electronic Commerce enables trade participants to initiate trade, and exchange trade related information electronically to improve the efficiency of the transaction. Electronic commerce helps in reducing latency in a transaction lifecycle and also reducing manual intervention with automated processes. Marketplaces are where participants initiate a trade and carry out a transaction provided requirements of all the parties meet. An Electronic Marketplace provides tools to facilitate electronic commerce between trade participants. There are different types of marketplaces or online exchanges depending upon type of transactions and participants e.g. one-to many, many-to-one, and many-to-many. One-to-many exchange can be Online-Procurement system wherein there is one buyer and many vendors preferred or otherwise. Many-to-one business exchange can be Online Sales system where there is one supplier and many buyers. Many-to-many exchange can be an online-product or online-service exchange where there are many buyers and many suppliers controlling the transactions by the supply-demand forces. Similarly, depending upon participants, exchange can be private or public. Private exchange involves fixed group of known participants. Public exchange involves any suitable participant with trade done anonymously or with disclosed identity.
There are several shortcomings in marketplaces that currently operating for electronic trading. A buyer or a supplier has fixed operating locations or trading markets. Many a time this market restriction is introduced by international boundaries. This causes problem for a supplier or a buyer that does not operate in those trading markets to respond to the requirement. Thus market reach of an electronic transaction becomes limited reducing the liquidity of the transaction. Also, businesses have preferred list of trade participants to reduce operational overheads. This also imposes a serious restriction on the market reach of the trade in the current electronic marketplaces.
Electronic marketplaces promise global trading crossing boundaries of traditional markets. However, cross-market trading involves complex logistics, cross-market regulations, and license restrictions that are not addressed effectively in present electronic marketplaces. For marketplaces with public trading and competitive pricing models these issues become very critical for the successful transaction. For global trading, which involves multiple international marketplaces with different regulations and logistics, costs associated with these may vary drastically and introduce operational problem for end-buyer or end-supplier to compare and make a decision based on competitive pricing.
Reduced liquidity, market restrictions, limited range of participants, and problems associated with cross-market logistics and overheads cause operational inefficiencies, higher overhead costs, and higher time to complete transaction.
Currently, there are no solutions that address the above-mentioned problems and shortcomings.
Present invention gives a method and apparatus that addresses above-mentioned problems and shortcomings. Also, it provides a completely new and unique way of creating a network of trade-participants that add tremendous value to the transaction by increasing liquidity, allowing cross-market trading taking care of cross-market logistics and regulations. Present invention when implemented increases efficiency and effectiveness and efficiency of electronic commerce. The unique process by which the information is tracked and participants interact does not compromise fixed or dynamic pricing model and private or anonymous public trading.